The Forum Draft series!

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This will be the thread for the forum draft and uploading of replays...

for information on how the draft works, refer to Draft!

Discussion of the mode is to be done in that thread. This thread is only for the drafters and hosts.

Forum draft Game #1:

Draft host: holepercent

Drafters: Cisz, jolin012, kaini, chris, DDRKirby(ISQ)

The draft has come to an end and jolin012 and DDRKirby will share the spoils.

The tower removal phrase started with Kaini removing poison for dual and voting Gold - Laser - Obvilion for triples removal. The first set of removals didn't feature any really strong towers. First removal tends to be the weaker duals and triples. Hydro and kindle were the stronger and more useful duals removed.

In triples removal Gold - polar - impulse are removed with each having 2 votes. The rest of the removals, being windstorm - flamethrower - laser - tidal removed randomly by draft host. The stronger towers such as quaker and zealot which received one vote each stayed in the pool..

The element draft pharse started with Kaini drafting darkness 3 which most objected to. Cisz's 2nd pick, water3 was accepted by all. Chris followed up with earth 3 before jolin and kirby drafted the other 2 lower tiers of water. 6th pick by kirby was fire2.

5th element, light1 was then drafted by jolin. Hopes were this would be a five-element build but it didn't turn out to be so as chris drafted nature1. All 6 elements were available and led to periodics being removed by the draft host, attracting some debate on the sudden rule addition. A discussion followed on how to make the draft interesting. It seemed that the only way to make the draft challenging and interesting was for the remaining picks to be light, interest or extra essences..

After much discussion, it was decided that it would be best if chris changed his pick which he agreed to. nature1 became darkness1 and the draft was back to 5 elements.

light2, earth1, light3, interest, fire1, interest, interest made up the rest of the picks.

After a brief discussion and clarification of the final rules and scoring system, the drafters were given 72hours to submit their replays. It appeared to be a reasonable game to complete but it fact it was much harder than thought. Many early attempts ended in the 30s and 40s.

Kirby was first to submit his replay by PM. Cisz was next. Kirby then submitted a second replay. jolin spent much of the last 24hrs playing to obtain a noleak replay which he submitted. Kaini submitted his close to draft closure.

The draft closed and chris hadn't submitted his replay. it was agreed that some extra time would be given to him before he was disqualified from the draft. He eventually did submit his replay.

The replays were reviewed and scores tallied up by the draft host. It ended up as a tie between jolin and kirby but i decided not to use the '-2' build design rule to decide a winner and left the score as a draw.

Although this draft was interesting, kirby felt that there was not as much room for variety and experimenting in builds as he would have liked to have. In the end, there wasn't many ways of actually completing the game given the restrictions. Light wasn't used by any of the top 3 players. The four-element DWEF was the build of choice. The ice build failed to impress. Given the time constraints, it wasn't easy putting out replays of this standard but you all did so anyway. If anyone finds other ways/better builds, feel free to post your replays here. The draft may have ended but it doesn't stop you from experimenting with other builds which you may not have had the time to do in the 72 hours.

For your pick, pick a element and it's corresponding tier, for example, fire tier 3. You can pick higher tiers without needing the lower tiers to be drafted first. No repeats. Interest and extra pures must also be drafted if you wish to have either interest/extra pure available for summoning. I will not be adding either into the pool at the end. The tier is important. read the original draft thread for some explaination of the importance of specifying the tier.

3 picks only per player. 15 picks in TOTAL by all 5 players. Each player contributes 3 to make the final 15.

Kaini: 1st, 10th and 11th pick.

Cisz: 2nd, 9th and 12th pick

chris: 3rd, 8th and 13th pick

jolin012: 4th, 7th and 14th pick

DDRKirby(ISQ): 5th, 6th and 15th pick

please wait for your turn. ensure that the drafter who is before you has made his choice before you make yours. keep to the order above. to help others, include the pick number when making your choice. therefore, the first post by kaini should be something like

1st pick: fire tier3

second post by cisz would be something like

2nd pick: water tier3

and so on...

First drafter can take some time to think through before starting. Consider what towers have been removed. It may be good draft strategy to start with something like fire/water/earth tier3. Tier3s and tier2s usually make good choices for the first few picks.

Remember, some diplomacy is part of the draft. You could include comments about your choice of element picks to influence other players. Have fun!

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don't agree with darkness 3. While darkness is a good element to have, pure darkness isn't that great at all and the towers you mentioned (muck, corrosion, roots) are all triples, meaning darkness 3 doesn't come into play. Darkness 2 would be much preferred, unless you really want to have lvl 3 magic, gunpowder, or disease, none of which I find that helpful. Disease is underpowered, gunpowder is alright but not spectacular, and magic is good but lategame creeps are slowed more, leading to each tower getting to fire longer at the wave...hence there's more mana problems (don't quote me on this though, I haven't really used lvl 3 magic towers at all).

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I disagree about darkness 3 too, maybe up to tier 2, but 3, no. It's not a strong triple, it actually sucks imo, and something to helparound for leakcatchng.. for 16k? no thanks. I'd like to see some other pures available around. Neither are tier 3 duals popular with current map balance.

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I really like pure darkness, it is something like a rescue tower, and magic is cool too! Gunpowder is a rescue tower too - and a perfect workaround for light, because darkness would fail.

(don't quote me on this though, I haven't really used lvl 3 magic towers at all).

I never played Magic 3, but Magic 2 is nice...

It may be good draft strategy to start with something like fire/water/earth tier3. Tier3s and tier2s usually make good choices for the first few picks.

So... why not?

Oh, you're free to make your own choices, of course, I'm just saying what I personally think IMHO. Different players have different playing styles (have you seen me play VH SR? It's very...hectic). The fact that you use darkness and gunpowder as "rescue towers" is interesting. However, ideally I would think you shouldn't need rescue towers at all =P

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To focus in a fewer elements rather than having all of them available, to make the game a bit more interesting and varied strategies rather than 6ele (sorry if it's against the rules to sugguest something that is not purely meant to make the build stronger, but umm... more interesting, (or to be completley straight and honest, maybe makes it a bit worse)). Also because water could be a strong pure, if someone helps to fill this element, contribute with a tier 1 water.

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oh, you can pick -whatever you want-, even if it's just to screw everyone else. Of course you will be screwing yourself in the process, but that's the fun of it ^^

5th pick - Water 1

6th pick - Fire 2

Agree wholeheartedly with having tier 3 water, and pure water is definitely a good tower. In addition, water 3 possibly gives you access to well lvl3, which, along with blacksmith lvl3, is one of of the very few GOOD lvl 3 duals.

Was originally going to add in Light 1 to counteract darkness waves, but then I remembered that both polar and laser are out (not to mention trickery and quark), so that might not be such a good idea.

Instead I picked fire 2 because it gives us both Corrosion, Zealot, Blacksmith, and Magic. Corrosion, Zealot, and Blacksmith are good enough that I think it would warrant lvl 2.